Spring Case Madness: 24 Of The Best

Chieftec DG-01-WU, Continued

We are not sure that we can’t say anything more about this case and case style that has not already been said. The quality and construction are very good. The edges of the case are clean and rounded or smooth where necessary.

The case itself offers support for four fans and with the four-fan configuration ; you are able to move a lot of air through this case. The down side is, of course, that because of the large vented intake in the front of the DG-01-WU, it leaves a lot of area for noise to escape the case, so using fans that don’t make a lot of noise but offer good airflow are important if you want to keep the noise level down. As the sample case was received by us, the DG-01-WU did not include any (yes, that’s right, not even one fan) of the four possible 80mm fans. You have to provide these in addition to the cost of the case.

One other important item to note is the use by Chieftec of these new thumbscrews to secure devices into the drive bays. This is not a bad idea and did work well in our testing and helped us build the machine a little faster. This case continues to be one of our favorite cases to build in.

A close up of the front mounted ports on the DG-01-WU.

Antec was the first to offer support for the two USB ports and a single 1394 Firewire port behind a nice flip up door. While the quality of the DG-01-WU construction doesn’t seem to be as good as Antec for the construction of the door, it does serve the purpose well.

Perhaps the biggest story about the DG-01-WU is that it offers good quality that you find in similar cases that are made by Chieftec for other companies. Perhaps even better news is that you can often find the Chieftec cases for a lot less than the others. This case is an excellent case to mod because the parts for this case are in such good supply. You can buy just about any parts you want for this case and if you want to experiment and try your hand at some innovative case modding this is an excellent case to use as a test subject. DG-01-WU is what we have come to expect from Chieftec’s Dragon series, with no surprises and good quality. Of course, the low price is attractive as well.